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My Minnesota guru of fishing, Bill Tikwinski recently sent me this picture. You bet my eyes popped out! That fish is just about as big as him! This toothy Pike was caught smack dab in the middle of Minneapolis on Lake Calhoun. Bill taught me just about everything I know about Minnesota fishing. When I moved to Minnesota from Oklahoma, I didn’t have a clue as to what bait to use or even the size of hook or lures.

I remember trying to branch out to learn more about the city and multiple gorgeous, glacial lakes that were in it and surrounding it and I went to a bakery and then to the Lake Calhoun dock with a fishing pole my son-in-law lent me. (I still have it, sorry Tom). I watched others fishing and knew I was ill prepared. I struck up conversation with a young man leaning over the dock with his fishing pole. He had just gotten off his night shift as a disk jockey. He said, “Now if you REALLY want to know how to fish, you need to come out here early in the morning around 5:30 or 6 and ask for Bill.”

So the next weekend I got up early, had my coffee and then proceeded to chicken out. However, the weekend after that I put on my big girl panties and ventured back out to the dock. There were several men out there really chewing the fat and laughing while drinking coffee from their thermos’s. One joker was telling a joke about women and they were just giggling up a storm. Yeah, men can giggle. I thought oh dang; I hope that’s not Bill, the liberated woman that does not appreciate women jokes. I got brave again and turned around and asked the joker…”are you Bill?” He said, “Well yes young lady, I am.”

Like this:

I took a long walk. Then I took a long nap. I woke up as the sun was going down and was confused. Then I went in the kitchen to make a lasagna and turned on the radio. Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion was on and he was in Colorado. Then I knew everything was going to be alright….

Like this:

Went to doc’s up the mountain and country club Walmart on the way down. I call it Country Club Walmart because of the beautiful Elk statue out front and because I’ve yet to see a buttocks crack or neck hicky in this one. Time to rest with Peanut by the creek as tourists bidding farewell to summer start oozing in.:)

Yesterday I went to the Farmer’s Market and bought some zucchinis. I left a big one in my neighbor’s mailbox. We often surprise each other with gifts of plants, flowers and baked goods…and yes, vegetables. We share a duplex and I live on top.

This morning I sent my neighbor a picture and a text message telling her, “there is a zucchini in your mailbox.” She texted me back that she was not able to download the message on her Droid. Her phone is not working right today.

So I took some practice crochet work and cut and clipped a note on it and lowered it down to my neighbor’s favorite chair on her porch by the creek.

She laughed her head off and looked up at me from her porch. She said that another neighbor knocked on her door yesterday and asked,,,”I just have to know, “why is there a zucchini in your mailbox?” haha. Now she knows it’s from me….the old fashioned communication way.

I almost choked today. I was taking care of a friends little kiddlings, age 7 and 8 for half day after their morning camp. The choking part. Well picture this: We are in Green Mountain Falls eating sandwiches at a cafe before we fished. These little critters are usually very quiet, however, out of no where, my ears were ringing with Jacob’s exclamation, “I’M VOTING FOR MITT ROMNEY!” Everyone turned and looked at us, I pushed the bread down my craw and screeched, “where’s the soap?” OMG. It was so funny and mortifying at the same time. As most of you know, I am pretty liberal. I also live in one of the few tiny liberal pockets in Colorado. For the rest of the day Little Jake kept saying that and I finally told him, “It’s a free country, but if you want to go fishing, you better not say that again.” 🙂

Like this:

After playing phone tag for several days with a specialist I’m finally able to see (I say finally because I do not have medical insurance which made seeing this kind of specialist difficult), I was finally connected to his nurse. She used the word “unusual” when quoting the dr. in reference to a test and it’s results, I had in the hospital, 10 days previous. Unusual, eh? Hmm. I think I like that word better than another word he could have used. I guess he could have said, positive, or concerning, or deadly, haha. I don’t know. What is the word that most drs. use when the results are not so great?

The word unusual was warm and fuzzy compared to the next few words the nurse spewed out of her cute little lips. They were words that I had NEVER googled in my life while researching my symptoms the past year. I’d never googled that kind of specialist to which I was referred and I’d never googled or even had any knowledge of the next test she talked about.

So I hung up a little in shock, made some important calls with a dry cotton mouth, while at the shop and of course the minute the phone would return those calls, the empty shop would fill to the brim with shoppers. So I just told myself to wait. Wait. Wait. One of those shoppers was an eccentric man and his wife. I knew him from my social work career. He was what I would call a spiritual Sage with many professions. He has 9 children and when he walked in the store, like before, he announces, I have 9 children and I want to buy my wife a shirt to match this skirt. I think, oh crap, I don’t need this. He is a Sage and has many helping professions, surely he can pick out a solid colored shirt. The conversation with my nurse was still reeling in my head. I was feeling much anxiety. But this man and his stories and wisdom calmed me while his wife was in the back trying things on. It was good he was there.

So the rest of the day brought in more neat people to take my mind of my morning conversation with the nurse. A couple from Minnesota came in and we shared stories of the North Woods and the Twin Cities. I laughed and had fun and I forgot the earlier morning for a few minutes. I was so grateful these people came in. It’s like they were lined up outside with a purpose. Make her forget, make her happy until she can get home.

And then the time came to go home to google the medical words I had never googled in my life. I pull up in my drive at home and a woman about my age, clearly a tourist came right up to me as I was getting out of my car. I think,,,oh my, I don’t wish to talk, I must go upstairs to my little cave and computer. I need some alone time. But it was not to be for the next 15 minutes. She requested a ride up the hill 3 blocks to her car near the train. She was afraid she might pass out due to the elevation. She was also from Minnesota. So I said, sure, get in and we headed a few feet up the hill towards her parking lot, when a trailer jack-knifed in front of us. I was trapped in the railway and incline traffic just a few feet from my solace, my little home, my computer. She apologized and I told her not to worry I was just going to get on my computer and look up some words related to an illness for which I had just started taking tests. She turned to me and said she was a breast cancer survivor of 4 years and then she started telling me everything I needed to do to stay calm through whatever my illness is and know that there are people out there that will carry me through this. My eyes started to water. I asked her her name because I was sort of getting a feeling that all these people walking into my life during the course of the day were sent to me. Sort of like angels. She told me her name. It was the name of a dearly beloved relative that had passed many years ago and then I knew this was not a coincidental moment. She also said, I’m a prayer warrior, Nancy. I’m so glad we met and she hopped out of her car while we were forced to back the car away from her destination and I told her to have a wonderful year, thinking of how important the 5th year of being in recovery of cancer would be for her and I continued to back up to finally return to my home. After that final unusual visit with someone I knew was sent to me that day, it just didn’t seem as important to be alone in my little home with my computer in which to google unusual medical words.